After many a dull fireball-slinging mage characters I decided to move on to something a bit more interesting... Illusion. However, I just can't seem to break my fireball routine! Anyway, here's what I had in mind, in terms of combat:
I would be using Conjuration to summon creatures to aid me in battle, and pretty much let them inflict most of the damage, if not all, with me healing the summoned creature and casting a number of different Illusion spells on the enemy, myself and perhaps the summoned creature. However, since I'd be basing my character around Illusion, do you think this would be too "non-illusive", so to speak?

Truth be told, I've never used Illusion for anything else than Light, Night-Eye and Invisibility, and I feel like I'm missing out on a lot; which is one of the reasons why I decided to make an Illusionist character. This is where you guys come in... I really need some tips on interesting ways of using Illusion.

Anyhow, thanks in advance to anyone who decides to help poor little me!
- TBD

Illusion is quite useful, although Lothran has a more blunt approach to using magic in combat. He uses Illusion mostly when stealing, escaping capture and in other tricky situations when force is unnecessary. For example, he has grown tired of fighting his way through dungeons and such and thus uses chameleon and night-eye to explore in peace. I′m sure Acadian can provide more in-depth info about this school.

Take it away, Acadian

Illusion is one of my favorite schools, its VERY expansive, you can simply sneak up on a bunch of Bandits and frenzy one and cause all of them to kill eachother. But, take advantage of paralyze, calm, and invisibility you should be fine, off of the top of my head, these are the only spells I can think of, but there are plenty more, so have fun!

EDIT: Yes, Acadian will be in here soon enough, grab a notebook, you might want one.

Master, I eagerly await your words of wisdom.

Goodness. After that build up, I fear nothing I could say would be very worthy. I do really like illusion though.

Sounds like you're looking for a pure mage based around illusion. It'll work great! Your bread and butter will probably be command creature / command humanoid. Pop that into a crowd and let them thin their ranks. Disappear and repeat as necessary until only one remains.

I like command better than frenzy because frenzy only works on NPCs and makes them attack the closest target (sometimes you!). Frenzy can be handy if you want to assassinate someone. Whack 'em with it as they walk past a guard and watch them commit 'suicide by guard'. Then you can happily chat up the guard as you loot the body with none of those pesky legal worries. I mean of course, if you're one of those darker kind of characters that like to do that sort of thing.

There are times when you need a more direct means of killing. I love bows, but let's rule that (and those nasty hitting weapons too) since you want more of a pure mage. Some mages might consider an enchanted dagger or staff, but let's rule those out too. You can't obviously command a single foe to kill himself. I like to summon a clannfear and disappear to help take care of that if going weaponless. A properly cared for summon (weaken your foe to shock to help old Stormy for example) can kill pretty well.

Now, what about 1 vs 1 underwater where you can't summon? I like absorb health for that for a couple reasons. I find minimizing destruction kind of neat for an illusionist, and besides, I don't want to freeze, boil or steam myself fighting underwater with that elemental destruction stuff. Lol.

Now, I'm sure you know that command spells are level dependent. The short deal is that your spell magnitude has to be as high or higher than the level of your foe. A level 25 (max magnitude) spell will work on any level baddie though. But you have to account for spell effectiveness. 100% spell effectiveness is required to have an effective max magnitude illusion spell that works on high level foes. There are a few ways to approach this:

1. Wear no armor. There's your 100% spell effectiveness. At higher levels it is easy to get plenty of armor rating and illusionists don't get hit anyway (so in a pinch a couple good shield potions can serve you well). Bear in mind you don't really need to be fully armorless until you get near level 25 if you make your spells a little higher magnitude than you need.
2. Run a small mod like 'Spells Be Effective' which simply eliminates any armor penalty.
3. Cap your character at level 20. That way you never see high level baddies. At this level, you can effectively use max magnitude spells against anyone, and with 95% spell effectiveness, they will work.
- One more tiny note about spell effectiveness and illusion. You need 100% spell effectiveness for a 100% chameleon spell to deliver 100%. If you are wearing armor, you can get around this by giving your self a little extra chameleon via potion or spell. Note here: DO NOT less this degrade into a '100% chameleon is overpowered thread' unless the OP asks for that please. I'm simply providing some info, not an endorsemant or opinion on chameleon.

An illusionist has great panic buttons. My fave is a combo spell: summon clannfear + go invisible, both x 20 seconds. I simply love the idea that to your foe, you appear to turn into a hungry clannfear! You can then run away while ol' Spike covers your back or safely lead your buddy right into a foe's face with impunity. One implication of this that I have found is the attribute of speed becomes unimportant. An illusionist never really has to run fast. Isn't than nice?

My mystic archer loves demoralize spells, since she can poison her foes and then tell them to run away and die, but for your more pure magey illusionist, demoralize / turn undead may not be all that helpful unless you simply need to buy some time or make irritating NPC's leave you alone.

Oh, and don’t forget that illusion also means never having to say 'speechcraft'. With the right spell, folks will find you simply charming!

Golly. Look at all this gibberish. Seriously, now, I hope you find some info above to be of help. Best of luck. :foodndrink:

I absolutely love tossing a command spell into a crowd, popping some corn and watching the fun! :twirl:

An illusionist/conjurer mage that prefers not to use destruction is an extremely fun character.

The main piece of advice is to use clothes (I like to enchant them with elemental shields) vs armor. Because for spells with a character limit, there is a cap of under 25 on the creatures and NPCs it will work on if you have any armor on. But if you have no armor and 100% spell effectiveness, then level 25 spells will work on enemies at any level, even above level 25.

EDIT: I didn't read Acadian's full post before I posted this. Looks like he covered it. Just consider this an agreement with the above.

Illusion is my favorite magic school, and one of my favorite characters is an illusionist. I think it's the most powerful branch of magic in Oblivion, and can be too powerful if you overuse it.

A couple of other illusion spells to be aware of... Silence is an effective way to deal with pesky casting enemies, and Paralyze will knock down your opponent for its duration. Those effects can be combined with others; for instance, you can cast Silence along with a damaging effect, and prevent an enemy mage from fighting back as you blast him repeatedly.

Also, Invisibility is far cheaper than Chameleon to cast, and is often equally effective. You can create a spell that conjures your helper while making yourself invisible for the duration; often you are able to sneak past your enemy while he is engaged with your summon, and not have to deal "personally" with the enemy at all. My Illusionist often uses invisibility and a distraction to deal with creatures encountered on the road, since there's no real need to kill them. (Or she'll use a Calm spell on them, and be gone before it wears off.)

God, Acadian. Thanks, man! It looks like I'm good to go, then.

Cheers, everyone! You've been immensely helpful, all of you. Thanks!

A touch late, but I agree with everyone else. Illusion is very powerful, if you're patient enough to sit back and think up a strategy before you engage an enemy.

However, it also offers one of the best spells to cast when you get jumped, which for me is Invisibility.

One of my very favourite spells is:
Paralyse x1 second
Silence x10 (use whichever you feel is best, I like 10) seconds
Invisibilty on self x10 seconds

You can remove the invisibilty and use it as a room clearing spell, I'm not sure if you can AoE with the first two effects. If you can, then a large AoE can incapacitate an entire room of casters, AND buy you a few seconds to cast another spell.

But with invisibility, I find it rivals "Invis + Summon" as a panic spell.

Hmm, is that why you posted that wall of text? Don′t be that shy, Acadian :wink_smile: